Jules de Balincourt, the artist featured in the Modern’s exhibition FOCUS: Jules de Balincourt, works from the position of an outsider on paintings of American politics and marginalized communities, both utopian and dystopian, in compositions that explore the shifting relationship between representation and abstraction. Paris-born and now Brooklyn-based, de Balincourt has been the subject of a number of international solo exhibitions, most recently his current exhibition Blue Hours at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris, last year’s L’Ange de l’Histoire curated by Nicholas Bourriaud at Palais des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and Jules de Balincourt Paintings 2004–2013 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. De Balincourt’s work was included in Greater New York at PS1/MoMA in 2005 and USA Today at the Royal Academy in London in 2007, launching a career as dynamic as his paintings. Such success is explained by the intelligence, passion, and confidence de Balincourt brings to painting and his life as an artist. Alison Hearst, curator of FOCUS: Jules de Balincourt,writes, “Countering the conceptual and theory-driven movements in contemporary art, de Balincourt’s works are immediate, intuitive, and open-ended as they explore the perimeters of the conscious and unconscious mind.”

For Tuesday Evenings, Jules de Balincourt shares his work and experiences over the past decade.

Eric Fischl, a painter, sculptor, and printmaker featured in Urban Theater: New York Art in the 1980s, gained acclaim in the 1980s with large-scale paintings depicting middle-class American life with themes of adolescent sexuality and voyeurism. Considered one of the most important figurative artists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Fischl’s work has been the subject of numerous solo and major group exhibitions and is represented in many museums, as well as prestigious private and corporate collections. As one of the principal artists of a multifarious decade that continues to inform attitudes of art and is in many ways evident in our current cultural moment, Eric Fischl shares his thoughts in his Tuesday Evenings presentation, “The 80's Seems So Long Ago. Where Was I Then?”

Kenny Scharf, an artist featured in Urban Theater: New York Art in the 1980s, rose to prominence in the 1980s East Village art scene and was one of the first artists to inject elements of street culture into the mainstream of contemporary art. For his 2012 solo exhibition Hodgepodge at Honor Fraser Gallery in Los Angeles, the gallery explained, “Like Warhol before him, Scharf became interested in merging the highbrow with the lowbrow, and began working towards ways of incorporating pop-culture into his paintings. As a way to rebel against the highly academic work that was being shown at the time, Scharf’s work reflected an Eden filled with animated colors and fantastical subjects ranging from the Flintstones and the Jetsons, to imaginary characters that could cast either gloom or euphoria.” Scharf himself has stated, “My ambition as a professional artist is to maintain the course that I set nearly 30 years ago by establishing my work in the fields of painting, sculpture, and performance. Every project I undertake is building on my past experiences. My original approach is unchanged; it is a personal challenge to produce the best work possible every time. One very important and guiding principle to my work is to reach out beyond the elitist boundaries of fine art and connect to popular culture through my art.” For Tuesday Evenings,Kenny Scharf shares his work and experiences over a long and flourishing career

James Cutler, FAIA, founding partner of Cutler Anderson Architects, is known for his environmental and emotional sensitivity to place, institution, program, climate, and cultural circumstance. For this Tuesday Evenings at the Modern, Cutler presents “Searching For True," stating, “We [Cutler Anderson Architects] have chosen, as best we can, to respect and reveal the nature of all of the elements that influence, or are employed, in the making of architecture. The institutions need to be clothed, the land must be respected, the structure asks to display its strength and order, and the materials want their nature revealed and respected. Each of these primary circumstances has multiple subsets that challenge us to learn more at every turn. We find ourselves constantly searching -- sometimes discovering, sometimes missing -- but always challenged.”

Jenny Jaskey is director and curator of the Artist’s Institute at Hunter College; co-editor of Realism Materialism Art, an upcoming publication on the “speculative turn” in philosophy and aesthetics; and contributor to various publications including the Brooklyn Rail. Of particular interest for this presentation is Jaskey’s curatorial innovations and experiences in her position at the Artist’s Institute, a research institution and experimental curatorial platform for contemporary art in New York City. The Institute dedicates its program to a single artist for a six-month season, and that artist’s work becomes the occasion for a series of exhibitions, public programs, and private discussions with leading contemporary thinkers from a variety of disciplines. Jaskey’s role entails long engagements and exchanges with artists such as Haim Steinbach, Lucy McKenzie, and Pierre Huyghe. At the center of the Institute’s approach is a commitment to education, believing that art deserves sustained attention and makes important contributions to intellectual life.

For Tuesday Evenings, Jaskey presents “Spending Time with The Artist’s Institute, New York”as she underscores the importance of time for curatorial practice today and how durational modes of engagement can provoke new ways of seeing and being with art.

Terri Thornton and Nathan Green on Urban Theater: New York Art in the 1980s

Sundays with the Modern offers unique perspectives on special exhibitions, with artists, curators, art historians, and writers holding conversations in the galleries. This special program is free and begins at 1 pm on the first Sunday of selected months.

Allan McCollum, an artist featured in Urban Theater: New York Art in the 1980s, became well known in the late 1970s for his series Surrogate Paintings and continues to be recognized for utilizing methods of mass production to render countless unique forms. As seen in his current solo exhibition Perfect Couples at Petzel Gallery in New York, a recurrent theme in McCollum’s work is the fantasy of ubiquitous distribution, what he refers to as “our dreams of things appearing everywhere at once,” as well as his ongoing challenge to our culture’s tendency to favor unique artworks. To view a mass field of McCollum’s individual shapes as images on the wall or objects on the floor is both awesome and perplexing.

With a penchant toward fostering connections and identifying individuality, McCollum has occasionally created works that directly engage communities and has called on individual craftsmen. In addition to conducting interviews and writing about the work of fellow artists, he has participated in collaborations with a variety of artists, including Andrea Fraser, Matt Mullican, Laurie Simmons, and Andrea Zittel.

For Tuesday Evenings, Allan McCollum looks at the persistence and development of ideas and forms over an enduring and impressive career.

Tuesday Evenings at the Modern opens this season with insights into the art and issues of Urban Theater: New York Art in the 1980s. Dr. Mark Thistlethwaite, Kay and Velma Kimbell Chair of Art History at TCU, directs a panel discussion with the Modern’s Chief Curator Michael Auping, organizer of the exhibition Urban Theater, along with Curator Andrea Karnes and Assistant Curator Alison Hearst, who also contributed essays to the catalogue.

Urban Theater: New York Art in the 1980s presents iconic works to capture the mood, energy, and critical themes that distinguished the art of the time in one of the world’s greatest urban centers. Even now, a quarter-century later, New York art in the 1980s still holds an aura of controversy and glamour.

Artist David Bates and Modern Curator of Education Terri Thornton take this opportunity to walk through the Modern's current exhibition, DAVID BATES, and individually discuss Bates's bold, visceral paintings and track the artist's developments, shifts, and repeated motifs throughout his 40-year career. Please join us for a direct and intimate look at the exhibition that has been a favorite of Modern visitors. This gallery program is free with gallery admission and open to the public.

Matthew Buckingham is a filmmaker and multimedia artist recognized for utilizing photography, film, video, audio, writing, and drawing to question the role that social memory plays in contemporary life. After earning an MFA from Bard College and attending the Whitney’s Independent Study Program, Buckingham received the 2003 DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Fellowship and a 2007 Artpace residency. His projects create physical and social contexts that encourage viewers to question what is most familiar to them. The artist Josiah McElheny writes for BOMB magazine, “Despite often having history, fiction, or narrative as their subject, each one of Buckingham’s projects reframes the question of experience itself, in Walter Benjamin’s sense: experience as the result and totality of a person’s perception, interpretation, and memory.” For this Tuesday Evenings presentation, Matthew Buckingham shares his ideas and experiences as they have developed throughout his art practice and 20-year career.